Bluehost Plus or Prime

I’ve not been a customer of Bluehost, but one of my friends has an account with them for several years. In the past year, my friend’s server kept getting hacked. Upon contacting Bluehost, my friend couldn’t get his site back up despite that Bluehost said they would help. Mind you that my friend is a small business owner who has little knowledge about web stuff, and I believe the majority of hosting account owners are just like him. Therefore, they would naturally turn to their hosting companies for help when things go down. Unfortunately, Bluehost has failed twice in helping him out in the past year, big time.
For the more enterprise-oriented customers, they offer a full range of VPS and cloud hosting, along with serious Java Tomcat hosting, including shared and private JVMs, as well as Java VPS offerings. With a company named MochaHost, you'd expect some quality Java support and they have it. So brew yourself a cuppa, open a browser window, and give MochaHost a spin. You have half a year to make up your mind, so if it turns out MochaHost really isn't your cup of tea, they'll understand.
Other agents handled many other problems of similar difficulty with no sweat. In terms of human contact, BlueHost agents work without bells and whistles. For example, they have no problem ending the chat right after you thank them and don’t bother answering stupid questions with hilarious responses. But during the conversation, they act naturally and try to help you as much as they can. All in all, after an extended analysis, I can say that BlueHost chat service is pretty good. It could be better, perhaps, but there is not much to complain about.
Speed: Surprisingly, HostGator’s speed response time test was disappointing. Nevertheless, given the cost of the service, the results are still within reasonable limits. The tests resulted to 45ms average response time for DomainTools and an average of 53ms for Bitctcha’s results. These tests were done from servers based in the US, so the results were as expected. What’s surprising are the speed tests done from servers located at different parts of the globe. Most results came in at an average of 200ms – and with servers from London just going a little above 300ms. Given these numbers, HostGator’s shared web hosting server speeds are average in the US and are impressive abroad.
Bluehost, on the other hand, has always provided me fast, solid support. I’ve spoken with them via phone and email and had great experiences with them both times. Bluehost has highly rated customer service and seems to deserve it – although they did come under fire with their response to a DDOS attack in 2015. In a recent incident, they were much more transparent.

Just left bluehost, and thank god I finally did. Wanna talk about price jumps ? I went from paying a little under 100 a year roughly to 200z my site was down endless amounts of times. A customer service lacks. Anytime I’ve called, it takes easily an hour to get ahold of anyone. And I recently called about my renewal, and the customer service agent snapped at me. I was completely baffled that I was treated that way by someone who is taking my money. I’m now with SiteGround.

It’s worth noting that BlueHost offers tons of latest security and performance features – NGINX architecture, custom server cache, HTTP/2, SSD storage, etc. However, these features are only available for those who are willing to pay extra. GoPro, BlueHost’s highest performance shared hosting plan, costs $13.95/mo on signup ($23.99/mo on renewal). WordPress Hosting (which is officially recommended by WordPress.org), now with a new dashboard and integrated marketplace, costs $19.99/mo (and $39.99/mo on renewal).

As well as the Akismet and Hello Dolly plugins that are added to new WordPress installations by default, Bluehost will also install and activate a few other extensions, including the WPForms Lite form builder plugin and the OptinMonster plugin that connects your site with this popular email marketing tool. As OptinMonster is a premium service, though, you won’t actually be able to make use of this plugin unless you sign up for a paid account.

Sites hosted on the GoDaddy entry level Basic Managed WordPress Hosting plan are automatically backed up every day, but, unlike SiteGround — who only store one version — with GoDaddy, 30 backup files are kept at any one time. You can restore these backup files in just a few clicks through the GoDaddy customer dashboard, and, when doing so, you have the option of restoring the files, the database or both.
To begin, I ran a website speed test using Dotcom-Monitor’s page speed test tool (Dotcom-Tools.com). It’s a free test that anyone can use, and it gives you load times from around the world. For this test, I chose Dotcom-Monitor’s American network which tests load speed from 11 locations throughout North and South America. The speed test results for Bluehost are summarized in the table and image below:

Bluehost provides great value hosting products, quick live chat support. But they have stopped reseller hosting, and there are problems with previously sold reseller packages they won't fix, e.g. can't add in addon domains, and this problem can only be resolved by their QA department, which only works during US working time. For users outside US, it's a pain to get the support.

My name is Jamie Spencer and I have spent the past 5 years building money making blogs. After growing tired of the 9-5, commuting and never seeing my family I decided that I wanted to make some changes and launched my first blog. Since then I have launched lots of successful niche blogs and after selling my survivalist blog I decided to teach other people how to do the same.
We realize that when you make a decision to buy Hosting Services it’s important not only to see how experts evaluate it in their reviews, but also to find out if the real people and companies that buy it are actually satisfied with the product. That’s why we’ve created our behavior-based Customer Satisfaction Algorithm™ that gathers customer reviews, comments and Bluehost reviews across a wide range of social media sites. The data is then presented in an easy to digest form showing how many people had positive and negative experience with Bluehost. With that information at hand you should be equipped to make an informed buying decision that you won’t regret.

I use HostGator for many of my small projects mainly because of how they structure their pricing & features. You’ll want to check out HostGator with a 60% off discount here as well. I’ve written a focused Bluehost review here. I have clients who love them – and use their email and domain services as well. I’ve found that every brand has tradeoffs – there is no overall “best” – there is only the best for you based on your goals & preferences. For example, this site specifically uses InMotion VPS Hosting – which has a big emphasis on customer service & performance.

IMPORTANT NOTICE – no tool is 100% correct all of the time. There are variations in results, which depend on the servers the tools themselves are using. In order to see the tendencies, I have conducted multiple tests using the Bitcacha tool which has proved itself as one of the more reliable ones. The average results are posted here in this review.

Formed in 2003, Bluehost has long been one of the foremost shared hosts on the planet, and they now power more than two million websites. What’s more, Bluehost is on a short list of providers with the official WordPress seal of approval, doled out by the WordPress Core team. With an experienced team, competitive pricing, and always-there support, Bluehost is King when it comes to WordPress hosting services.”
Although this hosting company gets a few mixed reviews, they come recommended by WordPress, which is one of the most popular blogging platforms. The hosting company also offers a WordPress auto-install, which makes getting set up quick and easy for someone without a lot of webdesign experience. Unlimited disk space and bandwidth transfer are also a nice addition. Rates start at $4.95/month (if you pay in advance), so it is also reasonably priced for someone trying things out.
Getting started with our Bluehost hosting products is quick and easy. Simply select the website hosting plan that best fits your needs (Shared Hosting, Cloud Hosting, VPS Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, WordPress Hosting, WooCommerce Hosting) and then choose the term length you'd like to start with. We recommend the 36 month term to lock in the most affordable hosting price available. After you've completed the account creation, we will walk you through the steps of website creation from within the customer dashboard. Once your website is published, we are available 24/7 to help you with any questions you may have about how to continue to improve it.
A year of my time was spent building and working on my website, and suddenly the entire website DISAPPEARED. There was no help available and it meant nothing to them. The year (and the money) I had spent developing all aspects of this marketing effort were lost in a heartbeat with no alternatives or anyone who even cared -- it was nothing to a technician at Bluehost -- business as usual. I have let all of the domains and the websites I have with them expire. Spend more time and money for what? AN INCAPABLE WEBHOST! DO NOT TRUST.
During my last semester of teaching I was approached by one of my students who said he could optimize my site and get many more readers quickly, but found some security flaws in the site which should be fixed first. He offered to fix it himself for free, but first I contacted support. They did not do much and claimed the site was in good standing with security.
Before you make your hosting decision, you’ll probably have read hundreds of different reviews from several different perspectives on just about every hosting company out there. One of the patterns you might notice is that several of these hosting companies offer an uptime guarantee – usually a guarantee of 99.99% uptime. This promises that you will be compensated for any more than 8 hours of downtime per year. This is not the case with Bluehost. Bluehost will not compensate you should their uptime dip below the advertised average. While their uptime record isn’t behind by much, studies show that Bluehost tends to have a slightly lower uptime rate than most of their big-name competitors. For sites that monetize on visits, that extra 4 hours of downtime per year can have a huge impact on your business. But when compared with other budget sites like WebHostingPad, Bluehost has a far better uptime for the money you pay.
GoDaddy WordPress plans feature managed services, which means you don't have to worry about tedious details of maintaining the server on which your site is hosted (e.g., security patches and bug fixes). While you're busy adding content, photos, or products to your WordPress site, GoDaddy ensures that your web pages are loading quickly and hackers are staying away. GoDaddy offers award-winning security practices, including DDoS protection, 24/7 server monitoring, and the peace of mind in knowing that experts are not only watching your server but they're keeping an eye on the activity of other users sharing your server.
People simply browsing the Bluehost website will be able to hop into a quick live chat with a sales assistant. I actually had a chance to try this out. I asked them a question about their server locations and the resulting customer service was great. They answered my question quickly and politely asked if they could help me get started hosting with them.

For a week I kept trying to get support to help with this, but they had no idea what the problem was. Suddenly they shut down my account because all those problems I was having were excessive server requests (from some change they did but never acknowledged. It's had problems ever since, including getting shut down twice more, the entire database disappearing twice, due to one of their automatic processes, and deleting all the backups.

Comes with a free SSL certificate, a WordPress custom designed control panel and CloudFlare CDN is built directly into your account for free without any coding. Premium managed WP hosting comes with pre-installation of ManageWP, advanced security features such as daily scans for malware and vulnerabilities. SiteLock Security, Advanced CDN & SiteLock WAF. Dedicated backup storage and automated backups.
People simply browsing the Bluehost website will be able to hop into a quick live chat with a sales assistant. I actually had a chance to try this out. I asked them a question about their server locations and the resulting customer service was great. They answered my question quickly and politely asked if they could help me get started hosting with them.

BlueHost doesn’t cater to any one group in particular: newbies might not get the support they need and may be confused by the crowding from promos. Advanced users might be disappointed with the weak CPU strength and miss some features they need. For the most part, BlueHost does what it says it will; it’s just not boasting of anything too exciting. Pros

I tried the basic “shared” plan for several months, the so called better performing and more expensive “cloud” plan for several months and I actually experienced faster page load times with the less expensive “shared” plan and about 1/5 the downtime. Each time I was scheduled to “migrate” hosting plans, “There was a problem in completing the request” and spent several hours frantically trying to communicate with Bluehost chat and on hold over the phone. While on the cloud, my emails were completely inaccessible, for several days, and I was told an outside tech had to be called. Their recommendation to me was to use “gmail” instead. It seems Bluehost is best as a “sales” company at the moment instead of providing fast website page load times, so people can grow their data storage and legitimately grow and upgrade their hosting plans. The Bluehost chat is often times a nightmare to deal with, whether the chat program works at all after 15 minutes and more wait times or freezes as it did with me several times.

I usually make use of their support chat and you are able to talk to a real person, someone that knows WordPress and website technicalities very well. One major reason why I love BlueHost is because their support system is fantastic and they are knowledgeable on all issues. From my personal experience during these 7 years, if you need a reliable and affordable hosting, that fit on your pocket, go for BlueHost , frankly, you won't regret it.
They got other customer-centric bonuses for 24/7 support, including 24/7 toll-free callback phone support, free domain name and SSL certificates for as long as you remain a MochaHost customer, a website builder with 500 free templates (and a service that will custom-design your site if you need), a site migration service. In addition, all plans are e-commerce ready and come with free shopping cart software.
I have been with Bluehost for 6 years now and I cannot be happier; the initial pricing that I signed up for was very reasonable, I still remember price shopping around and noticed that Bluehost was recommended by many influencers in the industry; they are also the top recommended host on WordPress; going with them was for sure the right choice. I love how they do the auto update for my WordPress site, i have had an issue with a couple of bad plugins, but with the current auto update, things cannot be more secure. I learned that they recently started offering free SSL, soon i will be selling a couple of products on my site, having the free SSL cannot be better.